Devotion
by Hate Finding Usernames
Summary: "Ladies do not start fights, but they can finish them." – Marie, The Aristocats


**I wanted to do something with all the quotes and poems and stuff I have littering my likes on Tumblr, so I'm going to post anything that comes from those separately here. I don't know why I don't just add them to my other oneshot collection but I just feel they need their own space so here it is.**

**Any suggestions are welcome and I'll happily do what I can with them if I can picture something that works with it.**

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"_Ladies do not start fights, but they can finish them." – Marie, The Aristocats_

_.:._

Jesse's not so sure how things escalated so quickly.

Okay, so he is; Bumper's a douchebag, you know it from the moment you lay eyes on him, and the second he starts yelling about signing breasts he's got this feeling in the pit of his stomach that somehow, something is going to wrong (which it does, because what's a regional acapella competition without a little Battle of the Boy Bands… Groups… Whatever they are).

So when Jesse sees the cut-out for the Tonehangers and he recalls how he had had to deface their van for initiation into the group – well, he thinks he might need to pay attention to his gut more often.

"Oh, look who it is!" Bumper calls as he comes out of his ridiculous chanting, waving the first place trophy in their faces. "Old dudes! Get a life."

"Sonic boom!" Donald leers.

"Just because we graduated a few years ago doesn't mean we can't get on performing our oral magic, alright?" one of them says; Jesse thinks this may just be the weirdest stand-off he's ever seen.

"Oral magic?"

"Woah, woah, woah, buddy," another says, squaring up to Bumper, "Are you looking for what I think you're looking for?"

Jesse is not surprised at all at Bumper's lame excuses to not partake in the suggested fight – his captain may act like he's big and tough and he may think he's some kind of mighty God, but his cowardice streak is pretty obvious – but the way they start having a _mimed _fight is something he honestly hadn't been expecting. Though he probably should. It's crazy enough to fit into the land Barden seems to exist within, because really, everything that's happened to him since he started college is not something you'd expect to happen on Earth, that's for sure.

"Hey you, hit me."

And then there's this guy in front of him, who's just asking for a punch in the face.

No, seriously, he's _literally _asking.

"Hit me, hit me right here, hit me right in the face!"

It would be amusing, if not for the fact that he's being backed into a corner and really, the whole thing is a little uncomfortable. Because Jesse isn't really the fist-fighting kind of guy – he's a 'use your words, not your fists' type and he's been fine with that for all his eighteen years. Having people try to start a fight with him is not really something he's used to or altogether that happy with participating in.

"You're, like, a grown man, I'm not gonna hit you!" he protests as he tried to push him away. His fellow Trebles are apparently of no help whatsoever, instead taking the approach of 'let's stand to the side and watch how this plays out', so he's pretty much on his own with a psycho.

Fantastic.

He puts the trophy warily down as the guy starts telling him far too many intimate things about his life and how terrible it is and Jesse's starting to think he might have no other option – it's either hit this guy or just be followed around listening to more and more of his woes, and really, the guy _is _asking for it.

Mr McCrazy-Pants hands him the trophy to hit him with. He doesn't know what this guys' problem is, but he's touching the trophy and that is _not _okay, because he still has to taunt –

Speaking of.

He hadn't even been aware that the Bella's were nearby, never mind watching… Or, more accurately, that Beca had been watching, and apparently grown tired of the whole charade because the first part of Beca he actually sees is her fist as it collides with the Tonehanger's face.

No use denying it, the whole thing is really very attractive… And he'd comment, but Fat Amy is there trying to shove the trophy up the man's butt and before he's even gotten an actual grasp on what's happening, the window is smashing and there's glass everywhere and people are scattering and he's just _gaping _at her, because _seriously what just happened?!_

The way she handles the whole being-arrested thing so gracefully is quite inspiring, enough that he finally manages to find his words and tries to get her out of it – which she shoots down with the sternest glare he's ever seen. She's accepting responsibility for the whole thing - He had always thought she didn't really care for the Bella's, but she takes the fall without even blinking, protecting her friends unwaveringly.

So he waits outside the police station in the freezing cold, for as long as he has to. Because it's the least he can do, considering how she had basically been his knight in shining armour and had then gotten thrown in jail for it.

(It's like some weird, reverse fairytale that he finds very appealing and he's pretty sure she's going to roll her eyes at and make some kind of sarcastic comment over, not that he minds, because it's a great story to tell the grandkids – not that they'll necessarily be _their _grandkids, but he can dream a little right?)

They're good for all of about fifteen seconds, joking around and her deflecting his mocking jabs and it's all great; he thinks she looks good with that post-prison look to her, but then she sees her dad and things go dramatically downhill in a way he hadn't exactly seen coming.

Okay, so he should have known. Beca never mentions her dad – like _ever_ – and he really only knows who the guy actually is because he walked past them once while they were chatting on the quad after class. Even then, she had given the cold shoulder and their mostly one-sided conversation had ended rather awkwardly, and he'd known better not to ask anything after her dad left and she grew rather quiet and pushed away the box of pretzels they'd been sharing. So yes, he should have known that calling her dad to bail her out of jail really wasn't the best thing he could have done.

But come on, he's eighteen and a student. He doesn't have that kind of money just lying around to bail her out himself (which he would have done in a heartbeat, but alas, his parents were a lot stricter on his allowance since they found out how much of it went towards movie rentals and popcorn).

"You called my dad?" she asks in disbelief when she sees him climbing out of the car, and she looks appalled in a way that makes him feel nervous.

"I know, but they were putting you in handcuffs, Bec," he tries to reason calmly, "it looked pretty serious –"

"That doesn't mean you call my dad!"

"Who else was I going to call?" He can feel himself actually getting a little angry back, because really, she's going to shout at him for all he'd done to get her out? "Why are you yelling at me? I'm the only one here!"

"I didn't ask you to be!"

It's the first crack, the first time she's given any indication that she might not be in the same mind frame as he is about… whatever it is they have, and it hurts enough that he doesn't know what to say.

"I was just trying to help," he says helplessly, knowing that the next words out of her mouth are going to be something harsh, something hurtful, and that he has no way of stopping them.

"I don't need your help, you're not my boyfriend."

As she walks away to face her dad, he feels the blow of her words hit him repeatedly. He'd expected harsh but they were more than that. It was a clarification of their relationship, a direct hit to his less-than-platonic feelings for her that she evidently didn't share (though he'd thought, for just a moment, that she might, in the seconds following the punch where he thought that maybe she was coming to his aid because she really actually cared).

The father-daughter relationship he sees in front of him is a lot worse than he'd realised. There's an edge to her voice he hasn't heard before, a type of vulnerability that stems from a scolded child that she evidently is not comfortable with. There is obviously a lot more to the story behind them than just her coming from a broken home, and if she hadn't just delivered a physical blow to the Tonehanger and an emotional one to him, he might see how actually, the worst blow of the night is the one delivered to her by her father, who essentially crushes her spirit and earns another strike to his name.

He wants to tell her that everything will be okay, but he's probably the last person she wants to be comforted by right now, so he keeps his mouth shut and instead hopes that maybe the Bella's will step up to the plate and find some way to fix her.

They're sitting next to each other in the back of the car a few minutes later (Beca had refused to sit up front, which he tries to take as a good sign that he can't be that high up in her bad books if she chooses him over her father) when he notices the growing divide between them.

"Beca, look," he tries quietly, because _he _wants to fix her – fix _them_ – before it's too late, but she turns away from her glare out of the window to look at him with a surprising amount of sensitivity. She's hurt, and he thinks she might actually be biting her tongue to keep herself from blurting anything out. There's something there, hidden away so he can't quite see it, but he thinks it might actually be a deep-rooted sadness. She shakes her head at him to stop him talking and he presses his lips tightly together to stop letting anything slip, and she turns back to the window with eyes that shine strangely. He thinks it might be tears.

When he stretches his hand across the seats to lay it top of her own, lying motionlessly in her lap, he looks straight ahead, so she doesn't feel overwhelmed. It's only in his periphery that he sees her look at him surprise, look at their touching hands, and see her look away, slowly turning her hand under his to gently curl the tops of her fingers around his. He squeezes as she sighs, and he hopes the small gesture is enough to get her through whatever it is she'll have to face when he has to leave her behind (and he hopes the gesture is enough to maybe show that he had the best intentions when he called her dad, and that he cares, he really does. Enough that he doesn't want this apparent betrayal to ruin whatever it is they have).

She squeezes back, and he prays that everything might just end up okay again.

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**Future posts probably won't revolve around the actual scenes in the movie (though will most likely be related to the canon) but I just felt that quote applied really well to that scene, and then I wanted to look at what happened after so... I don't know, that's what happened. I shouldn't be writing this because I have FFY and BR to focus on but hey, here it is! Let me know what you think, and throw any prompts and/or suggestions my way! I'd love to give them a go.**


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